A Few Things Clint Kept Secret
by danielle88
Summary: The longer the Avengers live together, the more they find out about each other, or some things that Clint never told the others and have to find out on their own


1.

The Avengers had been living together in the Stark tower, now called the Avengers tower, for about 8 months. Everybody talked and spent time with each other, there was even mandatory team dinners at least twice a week. Life stories were shared and pretty soon they weren't strangers anymore. They all had pretty messed up childhoods, ignored, beat, orphaned. Thor's childhood wasn't that bad but still had its moments. The two assassins didn't share there stories though, Natasha offered a little bit about her parents dying when she was four, but Clint didn't tell anything. Even Natasha knew very little about his past.

Clint had been walking the streets of New York and took a back road to get back to the tower quicker when he stumbled across a junkyard. Sitting inside was a 89', purple camaro. It was like a grape purple and Clint instantly fell in love with it. The engine didn't work, it needed new tires, and it may have had a few dents in it. He bought and who cares if it took some money, he lives with Stark, he barely has any costs anymore.

He got it back to the garage at the tower and put a cover over it. Tony had so much junk in there he probably wouldn't even notice it. Not many people new this, but he was actually a great mechanic. He didn't tell any of the Avengers because he let Tony be the amazing mechanic with all the cars. He learned in the army and it became another one of his escapes, like archery. It may not work as well as archery, but it was the next best thing. He would lose himself for hours just concentrating on fixing this one problem.

Clint took one last longing look, running his fingertips down the side before putting all the way on. He walked back up to the common floor where he guessed all the others were gathering for movie night. He sat down on the couch next to Steve and watched Tasha and Tony fight over the movie. Bruce was looking down at his tablet, completely ignoring the fight less then 5ft from him. Thor was looking at the two in both confusion and amusement.

Steve and Clint had become incredibly close in the last 8 months, no one new why either. They were practically brothers, the only people closer to Clint were Natasha and Phil. They watched the movie and after a midnight snack, everybody went to bed. Well, Tony went down to his lab and Clint pretended to go to bed when in reality he just went down to the garage.

He decided that he would work on it at night when everybody thought he was asleep. It wasn't like he slept anyway.

Dropping into the garage from the vents, he practically ran over to the beauty under the covers. He flipped the cover and stared at the car for about 5 minutes before finally touching it. He took out his tools and laid them out before he opened the hood. He beamed, this was going to be fun.

For hours he worked on the car before he went back to his room. When he got there he was tired enough to collapse on the bed, luckily he didn't have any dreams. In the morning he got up with a smile on his face and went to the kitchen to get breakfast. Everyone was there, even Tony woke up before him. Steve was reading the paper, his hair still a little damp from his shower after his daily run. Natasha and Pepper were discussing, quite seriously I might add, whose butt was better, Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Andrew Garfield. Thor was eating like there was no tomorrow, while Bruce and Tony were talking about something science related.

He walked in and went straight to the coffee machine. Everybody looked at him as he leaned against the counter, bringing the mug up to his face.

"What?" He asked. Natasha just raised an eyebrow at him while Steve smiled.

"You slept late." Tony said stupidly.

"Tony! I didn't know you could see the obvious, when did that start?" Clint's voice was dripping with sarcasm. The rest of the Avengers stifled a laugh, not wanting to hurt Tony's ego.

"Ha ha. What I meant by that is you never sleep in, actually, scratch that, you never sleep. And why do you have such a big smile on your face?"

"I slept, yes."

"And the smile?" Bruce asked.

Clint just smiled and walked over to the fridge to look for some food.

For the next couple months, Clint worked on his baby every night. The whole time he was thinking for a name for it, testing out different names until he found one that sounded right. Sage.

One night he decided to wax her, he had just repainted it last week. As he finished he stood back and stared as it gleamed in the overhead lights.

"What a beauty." He said before he rolled under the car, he forgot to look at the time.

* * *

Tony was walking down to his lab when he got a random thought about his car collection. Jarvis had been mentioning it a lot lately, almost like he wanted him to go to the garage. Without really thinking his legs carried him there and he didn't even realize until he got to the door and went to put the code in.

He strode into the room with a purpose and stopped short when he saw a glassy, sleek, purple camaro in the corner with two legs sticking out from under it. He knew that wasn't his car, he didn't own a purple car. Who was under the car anyways?

Tony was still standing by the door when Clint, of all people, rolled out from under it. He was wearing a white wife beater and some jeans. He was covered in grease and was wiping his hands on a rag. Now, Tony wasn't gay, he had his beloved Pepper, by even he had to appreciate Clint's arms. Being an archer and a master assassin, of course Clint had great arms, but with the grease on them they just looked amazing. He might even be able to pull of the grease look better than Tony. Maybe.

He had Jarvis take a picture of him before running back up to the common room and called all of the Avengers there. He pulled the picture up onto the big screen when everyone gathered there.

"I think Legolas has been hiding something from us." He stated.

"Hey what's eve- oh." Pepper paused as she walked into the room seeing the picture.

"Oh? What's oh?" Tony questioned her, there goes his jealousy streak.

"Oh as oh." She looked at him. "Oh come on, Tony. He looks really hot in that picture."

Natasha grunted in agreement. Clint was wiping his hands off in a way that made his arms flex, showing off his muscles. He was covered in grease and it looked like he ran his hands through his hair because it had grease in it and was sticking up in a cute, messy sort of way. And the almighty quality was that he was smiling. Actually smiling. Not like a, oh it's a picture smile, but a off guard, real smile.

"It looks like our archer is a mechanic and didn't tell us. That car that he was working on was beautiful. Jarvis can you pull up the current video feed for the garage?" Tony said.

Sure enough, there was Clint, putting on the final coat of wax. He was working with such care that the others were amazed. Sage sat there, new wheels, shining, and looking totally in place with the rest of the cars in the background. Another picture came up from a few months ago and was put next to the current one. The car was trash in the first one, the only reason they knew it was the same car is because Clint is standing next to it in both of them. In both pictures Clint's eyes are full of wonder, the only difference being the car.

"Why can't _you_ look at me like that, Tony?" Pepper asked making the others laugh.

* * *

2.

Clint had this amazing cover and everyone believed it. He was a high school drop out, that much was true, and yet everyone assumed he was as dumb as a bag of bricks. He wasn't. It should annoy him how Tony would always crack jokes about his education status, but it didn't. Enough people had called him stupid that it just rolled off his back now. Education being one of the only things that Clint had told the others, it is what people used for material on jokes. The two geniuses were the only ones that said anything about it, Bruce was more subtle about it though.

If they were in a room together, they would ask everybody but Clint when the archer always knew the answer to the question. It probably didn't help that in the beginning, Clint had been so use to keeping up his cover that he didn't even realize when he purposefully said the wrong answer to an easy question. Fury, Phil, and Tasha had their suspicions that he wasn't stupid like he claimed to be, but they had no way to prove it.

Pretending to be dumb did have its benefits though, criminals always underestimated him and provided him with easy escapes. He once tricked a mark into thinking that he was so stupid so they didn't even blind fold him when they kidnapped him and he was able to tell Phil the exact address.

The Avengers were sitting in the common room, all doing different things. Bruce and Tony were trying to figure out an equation or something, Clint was too focused on his chess game with Natasha to pay attention. He just heard their voices blubbering in the background and it was starting to get annoying.

Natasha could see her partner start getting tense, although she didn't know why. She knew there was no danger because he would have told her so. She also knew that it wasn't from their game because, as much as she didn't want to admit this, he was winning. When she finally started paying attention to her partner and not the game, she heard the arguing voices of the Science Bros and instantly knew that was why. Clint hated arguing.

She was just about to tell them to leave the room when Barton snapped.

"Can you please just stop." He said in a deadly quite voice.

The two stopped immediately and looked over to him.

"Sorry, we will keep it down." Bruce said, cutting off any reply Tony was going to say. Tony frowned and went back to arguing, albeit quieter. As their voices started to get louder again Natasha could see Steve and Thor look over to her partner with worried gazes. Clint was starting to shake with anger and Natasha stood up so fast she almost knocked the table over.

"You guys need to leave the room." She warned them. They looked over and saw Barton start standing up.

Clint was getting really angry, couldn't they just shut up. He walked over to where they were sitting with a tablet in between them. He picked it up and shoved it into Tony's chest a little roughly, not without getting a quick look at whatever they were fighting over first. "Take this discussion somewhere else." He ordered.

They scrambled out of the room and Clint breathed deeply. He hated arguing with a passion, it made him think about when he was younger. the stupid part was they were fighting over a very stupid equation that Clint literally had already solved in his head.

* * *

The next day Clint was down in Tony's lab working on a design for an arrow when he heard the two at the door. He quickly shut out of the design but not before Tony saw a flash of the screen turning off. Luckily he couldn't tell what it was, he knew that Tony was going to ask Jarvis to show him when he left. Clint was glad that he had already set up a fake page that Jarvis was going to bring up if anyone beside Clint asked to see that folder.

"What are you doing, Birdbrains?" Ahhhhh, a personal favorite of Tony's.

"Just messing around." He answered.

Tony gave him a look and Clint knew he didn't believe him, but he didn't really care and he didn't offer up anymore information. they went back to talking about the same thing as yesterday and that just made Clint curious about how they still hadn't solved it yet, they were suppose to be geniuses weren't they?

He watched them for over an hour before one of them said such a ridiculous idea that Clint laughed out loud.

"Why are you laughing?" Bruce asked curiously.

"Your idea was funny." He replied, still chuckling.

"My idea?" Clint just nodded and walked away.

* * *

The next day Clint went down to the lab and laughed again when he saw that they still hadn't figured it out yet.

"Ok, what's with the laughing?" Tony asked.

"I was just thinking about a joke Tasha just told me." He lied.

He sat there trying to look busy for the next two hours, listening to them banter about the equation. Finally Tony noticed that he wasn't doing anything and questioned him about it.

"Ok, so I was listening to you guys trying to solve the equation, is there something wrong with that?"

"Trying to pick up a few new words, Birdbrains?" Tony smirked.

Clint just silently got up and walked over to them. He picked up the tablet, scribbled out some writing for a few minutes, set it down and walked out the door.

A few hours later he was sitting in the common room, watching the new episode of a TV show he actively followed with Natasha.

"Oh. My. God. Why did she just kiss him? She is dating Derek. That little bitch." Barton said in all seriousness.

Just then Tony and Bruce walked in and turned off the TV.

A protest shot out from both of the assassins. "Hey, we were just about to find out if Julia's baby was a boy or girl."

"How did you do this?" Tony held out the tablet.

"Math." Clint smile cheekily.

"Clint, you solved this before we did, how did you do it?"

"Yeah about that, I thought you were supposed to be geniuses." He said.

"We are!" Tony called out defensively.

"Then why did it take you over three days to solve it?" Clint bit back.

"Hey it took you three days too."

"I solved it two days ago." Barton answered bored.

"What do you mean two days ago?" Bruce asked.

Clint sighed and told them about his peek at the tablet and being able to solve it in his head.

"Holy shit, you're an uncertified genius!" Tony almost screamed.

"You shouldn't judge a book by its cover." Natasha wisely said from the other side if the couch.

From them on, none of the other Avengers treated Clint like he was stupid anymore.

* * *

3.

Clint was a liability to the Avengers, not only was he just human, but he was also deaf. Nobody but Fury, Phil, and Natasha knew that though. He didn't tell the avengers though, he didn't even tell Steve. He didn't want to be selfish, but he really wanted to be on this team. He knew that if he told the others that he would be kicked off the team.

So he kept it a secret and so far it had worked. He hadn't had a problem either nix hearing aids yet. He had developed his own aids, with a comm built into them. They were water proof and basically could stand through anything. Anything except an EMP. He knew that was going to bite him in the ass one day.

The Avengers were currently on a mission, fighting AIM's newest goons. Some stupid lackey had an EMP and right away Clint new his day was going to hell. Of course it was the one day that he was fighting on the ground next to Steve too. They had set it off trying to stop Iron Man, but of course he was ready for that. He was deaf and stuck on the ground with somebody who didn't know he was deaf. He looked up trying to find Nat, but she was in a building helping escort people to safety.

Luckily there weren't enough people for Clint to be on a lot of trouble but after awhile he grew tired of having to look around almost constantly. Steve had moved on so he was all alone, and that was not good.

Clint had just finished what he thought was the last one when he got struck from behind. He was hit in the back of the head by the butt of a gun. He flipped over n the ground and put two quick shots in the man's chest. Getting up, he felt the back of his head and pulled his hand back when he felt the warm, stickiness that meant blood. He definitely had a concussion. He slowly walked to where he thought Captain America was. When he looked to his left, he saw a women frantically pointing to his right side.

He turned just in time to be hit with another gun, right across the jaw. He fell to the ground and the man shot his leg before Clint could shoot him. The man went down with a bullet between the eyes. Hawkeye wrapped his leg with a torn off part of his uniform. Her slowly got up and limped over to the women, taking her inside the closest building and hiding her in one of the offices there. He was about to leave when he felt a tug on his arm. He looked down to see the women saying something.

Hawkeye could read lips and he could tell that she was asking him to stay. He looked into her eyes and saw pure fear, so he sat down next to her, asking her questions to keep her distracted. It turns out that she was also deaf, so they signed each other things, all the while he was watching the door to make sure no one came in.

* * *

The team was starting to get worried, the battle had ended and no one could find any sign of Clint anywhere. He wasn't answering his comm and nobody had been on the same street as him when the battle ended.

Tony finally remembered that everyone had a tracking device on and they followed it go a office building a few blocks away. They didn't know what floor he was on, just that he was in the north-west side

Tony had the first floor and he walked to the north-west side, into a little office there and looked around, if the tracker was right then he would be directly to the right of where Tony was standing. He turned and saw a door cracked open, he approached it slowly because he didn't know what was in there.

"Iron Man," He heard in a weird voice, "Help!"

He ran to the door and threw it open to see a women being held in an unconscious Clint's arms. She started to sign things frantically pointing at Iron Man sometimes and pointing at Hawkeye other times. He put hid hands out in so slow down gesture and started talking slowly.

"Is he alive?" At her nod he continued.

"It's over, can we take you to get help?" he pointed to both of them.

* * *

Clint woke up in daze, he could hear a beeping in the background and when he opened his eyes, he instantly shut them. It was so bright and white. Clint groaned, medical. All of the memories flooded back, his aid being shorted out, getting shot, staying with that women until he saw the red and gold if Iron Man, and then passing out.

He felt a tapping on his shoulder and slowly opened hid eyes to see the whole team standing around his bed. Natasha quickly signed to him that they really want to know why he didn't tell them he was deaf. He quickly signed back to her some things to tell them along the lines of he knew that they didn't want a liability on their team and that he would be gone by morning.

Natasha didn't even translate, she just slapped him in the face. by the winces from every other single person in the room, he guessed it was loud. She quickly (yelled?) In sign language that he should never talk like that and she would never leave him alone.

When she told them, he could see the frowns on their faces and thought for sure that they were going to kick him off, but instead they all started saying that if Fury keeps him around, then it must not be a problem.

That day he learned that his team really does care about him.

* * *

4.

Clint was currently sprawled across the couch with Natasha curled against his side. The other Avengers were sitting around in the multiple other chairs and couches in the room.

"I swear to god you two are totally together." Tony accused.

Clint looked down at Natasha and quickly cut off her reply.

"You are right Stark, I just love Natasha too much to hide it anymore." He said dramatically, looking down at Natasha with a love struck expression.

She frowned and him and raised an eyebrow which made him belt out a laugh.

"Wait but are you guys seriously together?" Tony asked.

"Yes." He lied quickly without the dramatics this time. Tony, Bruce, and Thor looked super surprised while Steve just smiled to himself, knowing that this was a joke and Clint was only doing it to piss off Natasha.

"I knew it. You hear that Bruce, you owe me $20." Tony shouted.

Natasha pinched Clint's side and he bit down on his lip to keep from laughing.

"Tell them the truth Clint, or I will show every, single, person here your ticklish spot." She threatened, whispering in his ear.

Clint knew that he really should have told the truth, but he really couldn't pass up on the opportunity to make Tasha mad.

"Awwww, Tasha. You're so sweet." He said and gave an endearing smile just to really sell it.

Natasha snaked her other arm around and started pinching both of his sides with no mercy. Clint bit his lip to keep from laughing but pretty soon it became to much and he started laughing and trying to push her hands away.

Somehow he got away and started running, but Steve, that traitor, stuck his foot out and tripped him. Clint fell to the ground and immediately rolled over, scooting back away from Natasha.

"Ok, Tasha, I'll tell them the truth. We aren't together, we never were. Ok, there. You can stop now." Clint begged. Half of the remaining Avengers were staring in shock, the other half were laughing.

"Oh it's too late for that, _baby_." She said with an evil glint in her eyes. By now Clint had backed himself into a corner and with no where left to go, he put his hands out, trying to stop her. Next thing he knew, she had him pinned to the ground and was tickling his belly. Clint couldn't stop laughing and he knew that this was only the beginning.

"Nat, don't... Stop!" He got out in between laughs.

"Don't stop? Ok, you said it." She said.

"Noooooo hahahahaha." She ran her hand across his abs, she knew that the two best spots were his belly button, and the line of his six pack. His shirt was pushed up his chest and his hands were pinned by Steve's much larger ones. He was laughing so hard now that he couldn't even say anything.

When she traced a circle around his belly button, he bucked and laughed harder. He was trying to roll over, but Tony had effectively held down his legs so that he couldn't move.

"Are you sorry, Clint?" He nodded his head. "I need you to say it."

"Agggg"

"Say it!" Steve stuck his fingers in Clint's armpits and started wiggling them. Clint let out a shriek of laughter that was so unlike him it had all the others laughing. Natasha had started laughing hard enough that she had to get off of him.

Clint didn't even try to move, he just laid there, chest heaving and face bright red.

"I hate you guys." He got out in between pants. Everybody laughed again and Natasha pinched his side one more time, causing him to twist away and into Steve's lap.

"Don't, Tasha. I swear to god. If you touch me one more time, I will make you sleep on the couch." He threatened.

"Wait so you guys are together?" Bruce asked.

Natasha glared at Clint again and started moving over to him.

"Tasha." He warned and tried to move, but Steve's arms tightened around him.

"Steve! Whose side are you on?" He shrieked.

"Right now? Natasha's, it's funny seeing you so scared." He laughed.

Currently, Clint's back was against Steve's chest, and the soilder's arms were around his upper torso.

"Look, Nat, I was just joking. You don't need to take it so hard." He begged her to stop. When he realized that she wasn't going to, he took drastic measures. He reached behind him until he felt Steve's bicep before he followed it up to his neck. Steve realized too late what he was doing and when Clint wiggled his fingers, he let go of him and his hands shifted to his neck.

Sadly, the only thing that did was trap Clint's hand there, and he was now free. Clint kept moving his fingers until Cap was laying on the ground laughing, trying to swat Clint's hand away. Pretty soon Steve was able to grab his hand and stop the torture. Clint tried to stand up to get away, but Steve just pulled his foot out from under him and he was on the ground again.

"You shouldn't of done that, Clint." He said and moved his hand to Clint's side and started to tickle him again.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Clint yelled. Thankfully, Steve had more mercy than a Natasha and let him go.


End file.
